La Belle Cuisine
cannot urge you strongly enough to do yourself a favor and purchase this
excellent cookbook! It is, 'filled with culinary wisdom and
crystal
clear recipes,' (Jeff Steingarten, Vogue), 'the one Italian
cookbook you would
take to a desert island,' (Sidney Moore, Washington
Post), and 'quite simply,
the most logical and helpful book on Italian
cooking.' (William Rice, Chicago Tribune)
We could not agree more!

“An
Italian food historian claims that during the last days of World War II,
American soldiers in Rome who had made friends with local families would
bring them eggs and bacon and ask them to turn them into a pasta sauce.
The historian notwithstanding, how those classic American ingredients,
bacon and eggs, came to be transformed into carbonara has not really
been established, but there is no doubting the earthy flavor of the
sauce: It
is unmistakably Roman.
Most versions of carbonara use bacon smoked in the American style, but in
Rome one can sometimes have the sauce without any bacon at all, but with
salted pork jowl in its place. It is so much sweeter than bacon, whose
smoky
accents tend to weary the palate. Pork jowl is hard to get outside
Italy [it is
very easy to come by in the American South!] but in its place
one can use
pancetta, which supplies comparably rounded and mellow flavor.
You can
make the sauce either way, with bacon or pancetta, and you could
try both
methods to see which satisfies youmore.”

Recommended pasta:
It is difficult to imagine serving carbonara
on
anything but spaghetti.

1.Cut the pancetta or slab bacon into strips not quite 1/4 inch wide.
2.Lightly mash the garlic with a knife handle, enough to split it and
loosen the skin, which you will discard. Put the garlic and olive oil
into
a small sauté pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Sauté
until the
garlic becomes colored a deep gold, and remove and
discard it.
3.Put the strips of pancetta or bacon into the pan, and cook until
they
just begin to crisp at the edges. Add the wine, let it bubble
away
for
1 to 2 minutes, then turn off the heat.
4.Break the 2 eggs into the serving bowl in which you’ll be
subse-
quently tossing the pasta. Beat them lightly with a fork, then
add
the two grated cheeses, a liberal grinding of pepper, and
the chopped
parsley. Mix thoroughly.
5.Add cooked drained spaghetti to the bowl, and toss rapidly,
coating
the strands well.
6.Briefly reheat the pancetta or bacon over high heat, turn out
the
entire contents of the pan into the bowl, toss thoroughly
again, and
serve
at once.